With two readings, “How John Singer Sargent Made a Scene” by Sarah Churchwell and “Every Portrait Tells a Lie” by Debra Brehmer, the artist John Singer Sargent became much more real to me. The way he enjoyed a break from painting by playing piano, talked to himself and paced while lost in the art, gifted a lady a painting and was rejected, felt apprehensive about the criticism his best work, Madame X, was receiving, and strived to keep his private life away from the public eye was all revealed in “How John Singer Sargent Made a Scene“.
In “Every Portrait Tells a Lie“, Brehmer argues that portraits depict whatever the subject presents (arguing kids facing the camera with smiles on their faces) and the artist wants to capture (Dad wanted a happy family Christmas photo). Famous earlier portraitists did the same; the subjects of paintings had to pose for extended periods of time and Picasso chose to immortalize Gertrude Stein with a distorted face.
With this idea in mind, it became clear to me that his portraits were altered to show what he wanted to immortalize and seemed more personal thereafter. With all the talk in class and in the previous essays on Sargent’s many influences, it didn’t seem that he had his own style – just a copy and blend of others’ styles. Now it is apparent that Sargent sought to immortalize his subjects in a form that put all the focus on them. The shadowing in the background and lighting on their faces drew attention to the subjects and left few distractions for the observer.
I also connected this idea of artists choosing how to display subjects and subjects choosing how to display themselves with Humans of NY, one of my favorite blogs. Subjects choose what to wear and how to behave every day, actions that attract the attention of the HONY photographer. Then during the interview, they choose what parts of themselves and their lives to reveal. But ultimately it’s up to the photographer to decide which quote becomes a caption and which picture gets posted. By having a diverse selection of subjects and stories, the photographer humanizes strangers to the world. But “Every Portrait Tells a Lie” immediately brought to mind this picture, where I recall several comments bringing to attention American ignorance toward the Middle East and not realizing they had malls just as shiny as ours when all we see on the news are refugees and wars in deserts. Just as the subjects can lie, so can the media.
I think we had very similar arguments on how photographers can edit what they like and don’t like on certain pieces of art or writing which sort of creates a subjective view on the pieces, that tend to lean towards what the photographer imagined a certain thing to be. I also like how you connected HONY and the media in relationship to the lies that are told in photos because I did not think to make the connection. I think your point with how the middle east is presented in the media with pictures of the deserts and poverty really solidifies your argument on the ‘lies’ told in the media.
I really hadn’t thought of the connection between HONY’s quotes and a painters decisions in creating a portrait. I think it is very interesting how just as HONY ultimately gets to choose the face in which to present his subject through the text, so too does the painter get to quite literally choose the face of his subject. By varying a subject’s expression and head angle, he can convey different traits of the subject such as seriousness, anger, fear, etc. I still don’t know which I prefer since while the HONY quotes provide unique insight into a person’s circumstances, sometimes a portrait painting can feel more intimate.
I totally agree with your first paragraph here when you said, “the artist John Singer Sargent became much more real to me”. After reading the first two readings before, I did learn a lot about the painter, but he seemed like another dead artist to me in history. But after reading, “How John Singer Sargent Made a Scene”, people who read it get a sense of who Sargent was with all that specific and personal information given because we know what Sargent did and what his little quirks were. Like my English 2150H professor and so many other English teachers say, “Show, not tell”. We get to really know who Sargent is as not just a painter, but a person.
I think these two articles really shed light on Sargent as a real person. His previous biographies didn’t create an image of a real human being, but now knowing his habits and his relationships with his friends really helped me connect with Sargent and his work. He seems to have more depth than I originally imagined.
I completely didn’t think about how Humans of New York is a form of portraiture, and clearly expresses the idea that portraits are achieved via the desires of the sitter and the artist (or in this case, photographer). After reading your response, I feel as though I better understand that portraits stem from desire and goals. What a sitter desires to look like and what the artists desires to capture. However, I feel as though the combination of those two are often, in each instance, unique in itself. And this form is how the subjects become immortalized and captured in an instance of time.
You think the artist is trying to immortalize his subjects when he recreates them in his artwork? I never thought about it that way, but maybe you have a point. I think immortalize is the wrong word for what the artist is trying to do to his subjects. He’s only trying to alter the reality he sees to what he wants it to be. I don’t believe that’s making it immortal.